


And Back Resounded Death

by Featherless_Yuta (ArakiExMachina)



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale realizes a thing, Crowley's true name is also mentioned, Existential Dread, He nearly dies but it's only mentioned in passing, Is sentience cruel? The answer may surprise you!, It's the fear EVERYONE has whether they like it or not and have to work around it, Like a mole on the face of existence., Or marriage, Other, The realization of nonexistence and what thinking about it does to a person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 06:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12029724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArakiExMachina/pseuds/Featherless_Yuta
Summary: "I fled, and cry’d out DEATH;Hell trembl’d at the hideous Name, and sigh’dFrom all her Caves, and back resounded DEATH”- John Milton, Paradise Lost





	And Back Resounded Death

Aziraphale, on the whole, wasn’t ignorant. In his view of the world, there was the possible, and the impossible. The possible encompassed things which were within his and Crowley’s ability, like covering for each other, chatting about inane cinema, and occasionally doing paperwork for the other in exchange for some resource only their counterpart could obtain (Aziraphale had a stash of exclusive writings straight from the philosophers in Limbo tucked away in a corner of his bookshop, Crowley had received a few seeds from the various nine Heavens and was the only creature in the world with a potted cosmos). The impossible, on the other hand, referred more to things he one, didn’t think anyone could understand, and two, didn’t particularly want to understand. 

He hadn’t wanted to understand what oblivion was like. It was difficult to believe, but in his heart of hearts, Aziraphale understood that Hell wasn’t strictly evil, because whatever he told Crowley when the demon had too much to drink or too much to think about (or, God forbid, both at the same time), he knew that He’d been complacent in some way. Contrary to Crowley’s belief, Aziraphale wasn’t fool enough to believe that God had created this entire mess by mistake. There was one thing He didn’t create. One thing that no one created, because it was always there, but not there at the same time.

If Aziraphale recalled correctly, it was Augustine who had defined privation as evil being a Lack, evil being nothing, and when Aziraphale had, well, died for those few moments, he’d remembered. Hastur had attacked the both of them, and while Aziraphale had emerged from the skirmish victorious, a poisoned blade had nicked him, and it’d seemed as if he was done for. He’d woken up to Crowley trying to vomit up his own insides, cooked from dragging some last vestige of holiness to perform a healing miracle. Aziraphale had had a brief mental image of a dove when he’d felt breath flow through him, and not just any breath, pure aether. It’d filled his being, pulled him from the ocean of nothing that he’d floated to the bottom of. For a while, things went alright. He’d regained his strength slowly, and while Crowley damn near killed himself in the process of healing (“You’re going to be filling out my paperwork for the next thousand years for this, angel.” Or so Aziraphale could make out through the wheezing), everything seemed to be getting back on track.

Everything except the Memory. But it wasn’t a memory, it was a pit, it was a gap in his mind the size of a pinprick. Where there ought to have been a memory, there was nothing, it was a section of Aziraphale’s mind, a portion of his story where everything stopped, and he’d experienced something dreadful. After the incident, Crowley had noted, Aziraphale had stopped with the Heavenly rhetoric, stopped defining things as good or evil. That was because Aziraphale had, for all intents and purposes, witnessed true evil, witnessed nothingness, suffocating, all consuming, and simply not there. Crowley was wrong. Heart stopping evil wasn’t in the human heart, because generally, humans sought the good by instinct; they were usually heart stoppingly incorrect, both literally and figuratively, but not evil. 

Aziraphale had seen Death. Nonexistence wasn’t a void, because it wasn’t anything, that was the point. To put a broad scope on it, it was a loss of everything that had ever made Aziraphale himself, including Aziraphale. For the briefest moment, he’d skimmed the surface of being absolutely nothing. He also knew that God, in one way or another, probably intended for angels and demons to end up there when they died. There was no place for them to go, no Paradise or Inferno they’d wake up to, if they didn’t make the cut, that was that, it was a good run, time to leave. Even erased wasn’t a good word for it. When something was erased, there were always little imprints that they were there, and if even the tiniest bacteria crawled over it and was swallowed by another, less small bacteria, it was there. Not relevant, but existing. That, Aziraphale thought, would be ineffable mercy in comparison. Some speck of himself knowing he was there, the briefest slice of Being that would have negated this paper thin slice in his mind, one that had gnawed on him ever since.

The waters of Lethe were difficult to come by, especially in purest form, but Purah owed Aziraphale a favor, and given him a drop to disperse in a solution. It was all he needed.

He drank deep of the water, and let recent memories trail from his mind like sand in a river, take away that thing that ate away at his mind. Centuries wanting to believe that He had it figured out somehow and it’d only taken a millisecond, a millisecond he’d have given anything and everything to forget, to make him understand that even if He did, even if His plan was the best and most immaculate in the universe, even if its pieces clinked together and snapped shut like gears on clocks, organized like the cosmos’ most organized library, Aziraphale didn’t want to believe in Him. He didn’t want to have faith in Someone or Something that would throw any of his creations into nonexistence. Emptiness, disconnected, never to think or understand anything. A thought occurred, that if Aziraphale hadn’t been with Crowley, if one thing had changed that afternoon, his friend would have met that permanent fate. An icy faultline cracked open, chilled him to the core. Him own conflicts aside, thinking and questioning had been all that made Crowley himself, and Aziraphale felt some deep part of his heart begin to tremble, sink as he gulped down Lethe.

Temporarily losing memories did nothing after a while. It’d just made things inconvenient, Aziraphale would lose his way to places, forget phone calls. Crowley had found him aimlessly wandering through the streets, and the awakening terror Aziraphale felt as he realized that Crowley’s name was slow in coming to him caused the diluted stuff to lose its effect relatively quickly. He’d tried to claw the Memory out, subtly threatened Purah to give him more, than shouted, then begged the grey, diminutive little angel to made it leave, get this splinter of pure terror out of his mind before it drove him insane. Purah had written a prescription and told him to come back on Tuesday at five.

Aziraphale sat at his desk, his head in his hands. He’d gulped down the rest of his stash, but all it’d succeeded in doing was making him lose his way around the bookshop, and the Memory succeeded in seeming closer, driving near a cliff at top speeds, feeling the anxiety build as he waited for the free fall (and eventually, Nothing).

Crowley came into the shop, and found him staring at a crack in the wall, wondering how it’d gotten there. He’d made inane small talk, smiled nervously, asked if Aziraphale wanted to go anywhere, if he was feeling up to lunch, babbled on about some recent events that Aziraphale never bothered to catch up on. Aziraphale had realized, somewhere in the middle of an anecdote about chimpanzees and dolphins and zoologists working with both, that Crowley was incredibly easy listening. He was seized by the urge to tell his friend that. The desire to tell him that he was right about almost everything. The lunacy of the Plan, the bizarre nature of existence, everything but that confounded shred of hope in the words, because even if there was a well intentioned God, the two of them were damned if they were discovered, if Heaven and Hell truly took the time to look at the both of them (despite the impossibility of the situation due to Adam), and did what was to be logically done, Aziraphale saw what waited for the two of them. What had they done, other than be a bit off kilter? What had any demon done, but be made? The anger was all flooding out as Crowley’s ramblings spun on and the pull of Nothing in his mind was nails on chalkboard. Crowley was a hopeful being. If there was anything Aziraphale understood he didn’t deserve, it was the nonexistence, but God would have made it that way, and if Aziraphale faltered, if Aziraphale turned his eyes away for too long, that was Crowley’s fate. There’d be an emptiness where he was. He held the thoughts back for a moment, but it was like trying to push back a tidal wave of anger at his own mind, at existence, at the very notion that he and Crowley were sentient and given the gift of peering over the balcony and looking at what awaited them.

He’d confessed it without fully meaning to. It was murmured at first. He’d simply said, voice trembling slightly, “You know, dear, I enjoy listening to you think. Have I told you?” (If Crowley died he’d have never told him, Crowley wouldn’t exist anymore and he wouldn’t know anything). The genuinely pleased astonishment in Crowley’s gaze had cemented it. Aziraphale told him everything. Nonexistence, Lethe, wanting to let it all fade, and what was the point of existence or sentience if it means conceptualizing such a heinous fate? Crowley had been right, it was all horrible, it was cruel.

The demon had been silent, for a moment. Then, he leaned up, touched his forehead to Aziraphale's, and whispered a Name.

The important thing about a demon or an angel’s Name wasn’t just that it was a designation, a word, it defined them. When they’d been first conceived as a thought in God’s head, their name was the concept, the base of what they were.

Aziraphale saw a river. He saw something sliding, then something that grew, and finally, finally, decay, sleep, oblivion. This time, when he remembered it, he saw that same terror, but it was larger than Aziraphale’s, gaping at the pit of Crowley’s being, always there, an endless question trickling into a pit with no bottom. Guilt seized him, but it was soothed by a hand stroking his cheek, and a voice saying, 

“Humans feel it too.”

Crowley’s lips touched his. It was chaste, an expression of comradery, of sympathy and a bond that had been six thousand years in the making.

“I’m sorry, you had to know it too.” His voice was soft, “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, you know. Doesn’t do His image any favors, to be honest.”

"It's horrible." Aziraphale choked, "How do you live with it?"

"I manage." Crowley sniffed, eyes flicking away, "It's all I've really known, so I suppose I wouldn't understand what it'd be like to not get nonexistence. I've always wondered what it was for. Seems like some cosmic pit with no net, and He could have built us one too, easily enough. Nothing there for us."

Aziraphale nodded miserably. Crowley smiled a touch ruefully, "I think what we've got to do is make of it what we will. We won't exist forever, whether we want to or not."

"I'd like to." The mumble came out bitter, "I don't want that for either of us, Crowley, it's nothing, it's terrifying."

"There's something, here. Between us and Humanity, we know what we have. It's more than they do, Upstairs and Down." Crowley paused, and continued, "And maybe less."

"But it's what we've got." Aziraphale finished, slowly.

"Yes."


End file.
